Its author, world renowned historian and writer, Peter Frankopan will be joined on his stage by his friend - the acclaimed scientist, writer & broadcaster Adam Rutherford, for a wide ranging conversation exploring how the natural environment is a crucial, if not the defining, factor in global history. Taking us from the Big Bang to the present day and beyond, they will discuss humankind’s continuing efforts to make sense of the natural world which provide lessons of profound importance as we face a precarious future of rapid global warming.

Professor Peter Frankopan is Professor of Global History at Oxford University and Senior Research Fellow at Worcester College, Oxford. The Silk Roads: A New History of the World, published by Bloomsbury in 2015, was a No. 1 Sunday Times bestseller and remained in the top 10 for nine months after publication. It was named one of the 'Books of the Decade' 2010-2020 by the Sunday Times. The New Silk Roads: The Present and Future of the World was published by Bloomsbury in 2018 and won the Human Sciences prize of the Carical Foundation in 2019. The Earth Transformed was named The Times History Book of the Year 2023, and a Financial Times, Independent, Guardian/Observer, Sunday Times/Times, New Yorker, Frontline (The Hindu) and New Zealand Herald Book of the Year. It was the biggest selling history book published in the UK in 2023. 

Dr Adam Rutherford is a scientist, writer and broadcaster. He has written and presented award-winning series and programmes for the BBC, including Radio 4's Inside Science and The Curious Cases of Rutherford & Fry with Dr Hannah Fry. He is the author of Creation, shortlisted for the Wellcome Trust Prize, A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived, The Book of Humans, How to Argue With a Racist, Control: the Dark History and Troubling Present of Eugenics and the co-author of Rutherford and Fry's Complete Guide to Absolutely Everything (Abridged).

AGES 14+ // DOORS 19:00 // SHOW 19:30